To not remember much of my childhood

[Psycobabble]

Well not an aibu really but thought I might get some answers here :) studying long term memory at the moment and it got me thinking along with a post someone made on here along the lines of "you will genrally remember wether your childhood was good or bad but not individual stuff "

It really did get me wondering if my memory is bad in comparison to other people because my memories of my childhood are not clear at all !! I worry about it sometimes !! I often read autobiographies ( reading one right now ) and the detail people go into such as remembering numerous conversations they have had always amazes me .altho I appreciate it may be bulked out in order to add to the book!

I of course do have memories and remember places we went clothes I had old friends school etc etc but nothing in great detail like I can see my old primary school in my head almost like in pictures but i couldn't recall for example a conversation I had during that time yet people often seem able to do this

I did have a period were there was a serious family illness that was a very difficult time for us for q very long while and I developed anxiety after this so I do sometimes wonder if I had to much of a foggy head at the time and maybe that's why I don't remember a lot

So I'm not sure if my memory is bad or normal

Do you remember exchanges and conversations with others clearly from when you were young ??

Sorry this is very geeky but I find it interesting !!

Memory is a construct and even a few hours after an event your mind will fill in gaps. There is also evidence that different people who have experienced the same event will perceive it differently because of how their mind has constructed the memory, hence why eye witness testimony is so unreliable..... there was a big hoo-ha around false memories in the 80's after a pair of therapists methods were found to have leading questions which helped the brain construct memories which simply were not true but were so believable to the individual because cognitive dissonance is so uncomfortable that we reconstruct to achieve consistent memories

If you don't remember anything from your childhood, you should get checked by a psychologist, you may have been traumatized.

However, I think it is normal to only remember parts. I only remember parts that stood out in my own childhood. Like, tiny parts of individual birthday parties, etc., all starting at about age 3.

With conversations, I only remember the gist of what was said, never the wording, except if the wording was very important for some reason.

I have this, to some extent - it's a thing! Google infantile amnesia.

I don't remember a lot, definitely not conversations. The things I do remember are different to the things my parents remember/see as important. Obviously they remember much more than me but of what I do remember, it's usually things they don't talk about. Not necessarily bad things just different things

It's a problem with my mother. She's obsessed with asking me if I remember xyz from when I was very young and gets really offended if I say no so I usually say yes now even though I dont. we don't talk very much and this is only part of why.

I remember a lot of short conversations, and things teachers said in primary school. Not everything was significant or memorable, some of the stuff is a bit mundane. My oldest memory is when I was 2, and being in a pushchair, and I've got quite a few more pre-school memories and lots from school.

I can also remember two recurring nightmares I had as a young child that used to really scare me, and as an adult looking back I can see that I must have sensed the tension between my parents, as they were all about the family being under threat. I didn't understand them at the time. But obviously I wasn't traumatised enough for them to be erased from my memory for ever. I think they stopped when my dad left when I was 8.